The present invention relates to pager receivers in general, and more particularly, to a programmable multi-address pager receiver and method of characterizing same for governing the operation of alert annunciation in response to decoded pager call addresses and address functions associated therewith. In a conventional paging system, one or more centrally located transmitting stations transmit pager call information in a conventional protocol format, such as POCSAG or Golay Sequential Code, for example. Included in the transmitted signalling format are the selective call addresses of the individual pager receivers designated to receive the pager calls. Some pager receivers are programmed with only one selective call address and respond accordingly to alert the user when that address is decoded from the received signalling. Others are multi-address receivers, similar to the type described in the above-referenced copending application, for example, which are programmed to decode two or more selective call addresses and alert the user to each decoded call address. In addition, the conventional protocol formats permit multiple address functions with each decoded call address. POCSAG and Golay, for example, permit four address functions with each call address.
Pager receivers of the tone-only type include an alert generation circuit for generating either an audio, tactile, or visual signal at an assigned annunciation pattern. For example, the Motorola pager receiver, Model #RC14A, is capable of decoding four call addresses with each address being assigned any one of 128 different alert patterns. Thus, when an address is decoded by the RC14A decoder, the alert generator is enabled to generate the alert signal at the assigned annunciation pattern. This capability poses special problems in that humans have difficulty in discriminating between more than six or eight audible or visual alert patterns.
Another Motorola pager receiver, Model PMR 2000.RTM., is operative in either the Golay or POCSAG protocols to decode either of two preprogrammed call addresses as well as the corresponding four address functions associated with each call address. The PMR 2000.RTM. model pager has alert patterns preassigned correspondingly to the address functions such that once a call address is decoded, the preassigned alert pattern is generated. Accordingly, a further problem is posed in that a typical user may have no need to be alerted to all of the four functions associated with a POCSAG or Golay call address. The caller may only need to be alerted to a sub-set of the decoded addresses and of the functions of each decoded call address.
This latter situation comes about because of the need to be able to simultaneously alert pager members of groups--the so called "group call" feature--while retaining the ability to selectively signal each person of the group individually. For example, a doctor would need one or more individual calls associated with his private practice, and might also need to be alerted to calls to assemble the "Code Blue" emergency team in a hospital, but not to calls for the hospital's fire or disaster teams. Further, in the United States, radio common carriers are reluctant to allow POCSAG pager users to use more than one or two of the four POCSAG address functions because the carrier must provide a telephone access number for each operable function.
While the aforementioned pager receivers which are the closest known technology, provide different alert patterns for each address function, and provide assignable patterns, they do not provide for totally arbitrary assignment of alerts to a large number of address functions while disabling the functions that are not assigned alert patterns. Thus, it is clearly desirable to have pager receiver which permits a specific alert pattern from a limited set of alert patterns to be associated to any address function in a multi-address pager. In addition, a pager receiver which responds to any arbitrary combination of address functions, and conversely, permits no response to any arbitrary sub-set of the address functions that the pager decodes is also believed needed. Still further, it is desirable to have a multi-address selective call receiver which assigns specific alert patterns to arbitrarily selected addresses, while simultaneously disabling the alert generating circuitry in response to other functions of the same call addresses.
The present invention, an embodiment of which being described in the following sections utilizing the accompanying drawings, proposes to solve the aforementioned problems by:
individually assigning address functions to generate alert signalling with a specific one of a limited number of alert annunciation patterns,
allowing a pager receiver to respond to arbitrary sub-sets of the address functions associated with a POCSAG call address, for example,
providing the ability to form arbitrary groups (i.e. have any person respond to any group alert) with each pager receiver generating the same alert pattern to the group call signal, and
allowing the pager receiver to not respond to address functions not assigned an alert signalling pattern.